


Aka In Your Own Words

by prinkes



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11157735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prinkes/pseuds/prinkes
Summary: Jessica's facing murder charges for Kilgrave's death. In order to help her case, Hogarth asks her to write a deposition -- a summary of what it was like, being under his control for so long. In her own words, Jessica tells her story.The rape is mentioned, but not in any sort of graphic detail. That being said... it's not a pretty story. The truth rarely is.





	Aka In Your Own Words

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little one shot I wrote, originally posted an RP blog on Tumblr.

Hogarth said it was necessary. That it could make or break the case. Jessica would’ve thought it was just a way for the scummiest shark in the city to get her rocks off on all the gory details – but Hogarth’s look was deadly serious, focused on only one thing. Winning. For her.

“The more I understand, Jessica,” she said. “The more I can help.” Her voice clipped and curt, as usual. But there was been an unfamiliar softness around the edge of her words.

Maybe it was the booze, but lately, there wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to soften _anything._

She’d been numb at first – slept three full days, passed out on her couch. Malcolm and Trish and Claire, somehow, taking shifts watching over her. Sometimes they asked her how she was feeling. She didn’t answer. Hadn’t been able to put it into words. Still couldn’t – how do you talk about the ever-present sound of bones snapping like twigs in your ears, the feel of someone’s skin and the weight of their body in your hands, the sight of his blank, empty eyes, still so cold they sent shockwaves through you.

“We need to hear it in your own words,” Hogarth said, sliding the legal pad over. “It will make a difference, Jessica. I promise you that.”

It wasn’t exactly heroic, not the kind of difference she wanted to make, but Jessica pulled the pad towards her.

“Start at the beginning,” she muttered under breath. Then she began writing.

 

* * *

 

_Jessica Jones. Defendant._

_I met him a little over two years ago. I don’t know the exact date. Sometime in May, I think. It’s hard to remember. Because his ability ~~leaves~~ left this fog in your head. Like there was a panel of glass between you and the rest of the world. You could see it, but you couldn’t touch it. You couldn’t be heard through the glass. And you couldn’t break it._

_At least, I couldn’t. Not then._

_I was walking by when I saw someone in trouble. Getting mugged, beat up pretty bad – but one of the assholes (can I swear in this? Fuck it.) – one of them pulled out a knife. So I jumped in, pulled them off. I went to go help the guy who’d gotten his ass kicked, and that’s when I heard him clapping._

_He had two other women with him. I don’t know what happened to them, because he told them to leave, and they did. He didn’t need them, because he had me. The second he said ‘Leave him, he’s fine,’ he had me. Totally under his control. It was that easy. A few words, and his voice was the only one in my head. He said ‘Come here, let me look at you,’ and I **needed** it, needed to obey._

_But I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it._

_Not the Chinese food he took me to, though he made me ‘love it,’ or at least say I did. Not the drinks he poured down my throat ~~(possibly the only drinks in my life I didn’t want).~~ Not the night we spent in his penthouse hotel room afterwards.  _

_That was the first time he raped me. I’m not telling you about every goddamn one. He had me under his control for eight months, there were a lot of hotel rooms. A lot of beds._

_He forced his way into people’s homes, too. Forced us into them. We’d stay there for a week or two. He liked pretending to be ‘domestic’ for a little while. He made me cook his meals. Forced me into dresses and aprons and make up. I poured his coffee in the morning. I slept next to him at night. The actual members of the household being locked in a closet or another room killed the mood for me, but not for him._

_Sometimes, he’d be leading me down the street, and he’d see something – a pearl necklace or a fur coat, something someone was wearing or holding, and he’d decide it would look perfect on me. He’d order them to hand them over. Force me to put it on. And we’d move on. He almost never bothered telling them not to go to the cops – who the hell would believe them anyway?_

_He liked dressing me up. Cut my hair, took me to a salon that was happy to see him even though he never tipped. ‘Bought’ me dresses – if telling the store clerk to give it to you counts as buying. Money never changed hands around him. He didn’t need it._

_Sometimes he didn’t even need his powers. He charmed people with his accent and his suits and his white, white skin. That little edge of class that screams ‘I was a rich prick growing up’ worked well on people who shared that trait. He got invited to a lot of goddamn parties, and showed up at the ones he wasn’t anyway. Guests’ lists aren’t a problem with mind-control._

_He’d take me with him, make me hold his arm all night. Let me drink enough to keep up appearances, but he never liked my eyes too glassy. He’d prance around the room, showing me off like a trophy. He rarely introduced himself, but he said my name over and over and over._

 

* * *

 

The pen snapped in her hand, making Jessica and Hogarth both jump. “Sorry,” Jessica muttered, staring at the ink spreading over her hand.

“I’ll get a towel,” Hogarth sighed, standing up and striding out of the office.

Jessica couldn’t sit still. She stood up, shaking her hand, pacing around the lawyer’s office. She crossed around behind the desk, staring down at her hands. The ink on her palm dried rapidly, and it was so black against her pale skin, so black she almost saw it as red, so black it almost seemed _purple_ –

She snatched another pen from Hogarth’s drawer, sat behind in the lawyer’s chair, and kept writing.

 

* * *

 

_Traveling. He liked traveling. Like I said, money wasn’t an issue. I’d wake up and he’d announce that we were going to Madrid, or the Caribbean, or Germany. We went to France a few times. Once to the Lourve (after hours, he actually made the security guard let him touch the Mona Lisa), and once to the Eiffel Tower. For Christmas. He thought it was ‘romantic,’ because we were the only two there. He’d made everyone else leave._

_He had a lot of little ‘moments’ like that. He made me celebrate our one-month anniversary, buy him a tie, took me to a restaurant for his favorite meal, and back to another goddamn hotel room. The best in the city._

_He got bored with that after two or three months. Time gets slippery around him, you start not being able to know how many days have passed. Your only sense of hours passing is the feel of his command weakening as they tick by, agonizingly slow._

_His ability has limits. Time and distance. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight, not for more than minutes at a time, and only with commands to come back, but sometimes, hours went by without him telling me to do anything._

_And the more time that passed without him re-upping, the closer I got to having my mind again. You know when you stay up for days, and your brain gets to the point where it’s so exhausted you can barely take in the world around you for more than few seconds, and your mind starts to drift off for a minute until you remember what you’re doing and then you jolt back? It was like that. Like waking up when you had never fallen asleep. Everything slowly coming back into focus when you had never noticed it was blurry._

_I was always fighting. Always. Some tiny corner of my mind was always fighting his voice. Always wanting to say no, to **scream** it. Sometimes it was soft and subtle, just a pulse in the back of my mind, and sometimes it was almost as loud as him. I couldn’t fight him, I couldn’t stop, but I could keep trying. _

_So I waited. For one, single opportunity to get away from him. To escape, to run and never look back. Every hour that passed without him telling me to do something, I prayed for this to be the end. To wake up from the nightmare of being a slave in your own body, a living goddamn zombie that no one can see rotting in front of their eyes._

_It only happened once. Eighteen seconds. I remember every single one, I remember everything vividly. Time is slippery, but the details are sharp. So I remember the day he let me go for eighteen seconds. It took me a few to realize it was actually happening, that I hadn’t miscounted, that I could actually stop him from kissing me for once._

_I sent him inside. Told him I’d be there in a moment. He listened to **me.** I watched him go. But even after he was gone, even after I was finally, finally alone, it took another few seconds for me to move. To climb up onto the ledge and try to talk myself into jumping off._

_I wasn’t goddamn suicidal, I don’t need a psych eval. I knew I could survive it. That I could jump, and then run down the block, too far for him to make me come back. But I didn’t jump. Getting him completely out of my head was like prying fungus from a window, with nothing but my bare hands. I couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stand there and imagine it happening._

_~~Imagined a goddamn white horse and everything. Like I was a princess being saved. He called me that once.~~ _

_Eighteen seconds wasn’t enough to get away from him. He called me back, made me come down. But it took him twice to say it. I remember that, because he asked why I hadn’t listened to him. When he asked you a question, you had to answer it. Truthfully. ‘Because I don’t want to,’ I told him. It was the truth. I wanted to listen to someone else, anyone else._

_He wasn’t happy. He handed me a knife and told me, ‘Cut them off.’ Them being my goddamn ears. I have the scar to prove it._

_It must’ve been towards the end. One of those early fall days, where it’s goddamn cold but the sun is out. It was chilly._

 

* * *

 

“Jessica?”

Hogarth’s voice didn’t startle her. Jessica knew she’d been there a while. Watching her write and scribble and curse lightly at these stupid, _stupid_ words. This wasn’t helping. This wasn’t going to make a difference. This was pointless and painful, and she couldn’t even look up at Hogarth to tell her so because if she moved at all, if she shifted even an inch, every piece of her would crumble. Not like sugar or a house of cards, but like a mirror shattering under a fist.

“ _What?_ ” she hissed. She could manage that much.

Hogarth must’ve sensed something, or maybe Jessica had finally scared her without breaking a window. Because the lawyer didn’t say anything, just slid a glass of water and a fluffy, expensive looking towel onto the desk, and crossed the office. She didn’t even breathe a word about where Jessica was sitting. Just took a seat on her couch and sat very still.

Jessica shot the glass a look, but took a sip. Then she kept writing, smearing ink-stains onto the paper as she wrote.

 

* * *

 

_It was dark. The first time I got away from him. It was dark, and it was cold, and he had me bundled in a fur coat. Brown, I remember, because I still have it. And because he was angry about the weather. He wanted me in purple, but he couldn’t mind control the weather, and my purple coat was too thin. “Maybe tomorrow, darling,” he said._

_January 20 th. I know that because of the articles. About the bus crash._

_I don’t know exactly how it happened. Maybe it was time. Maybe I’d spent so long with him that I built up an immunity. His parents they said it was a virus, this thing he had, that it was a virus that infected you. He never had anyone as long as me, he said that more than once. Said I was **special.** So maybe, if you kept fighting it as long as I did, it just broke one day. _

_Or maybe it was because he got hit by a goddamn bus._

_I was walking across the street. Trying to run. He was yelling at me to come back, but sometimes I could fight it, even for a second. Eighteen seconds wasn’t enough to get away, but five seconds and a bus? He didn’t even see it coming._

_Eventually I could run. After two blocks, I could do it. I ran and I ran and I ran until I was at Trish’s house, the one we’d lived in together before this all happened. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I kept waiting to see him, to hear him behind me. I kept waiting for that fog to get thicker in my head, for that **need** to take over. It was like a drug, his voice. Or like he made his commands a drug. He told you what he wanted and you **craved** doing it. _

_There was a woman there, too. I didn’t remember until later, until the articles came out. That one thing fell through my mind. Maybe her being there was why he couldn’t stop me leaving. Maybe she gave me a little piece of myself back._

_She got hit by the bus, too. It was her names in the papers. I didn’t think that was strange. She was a local hero, he was a John Doe no one came to claim. I saw the death certificate. I thought it was really over. Turned out, he stole an ambulance and escaped, forced a doctor to forge his death certificate._

_I can’t tell you how he does it. I’m not a scientist or a goddamn expert on this shit. I can only tell you how it feels. How he treated people like animals, used them and tossed them aside like garbage. How he used his ‘gift’ to ruin people’s lives, tear them apart for his own sick amusement. How once his voice is in your head, it never really goes away. It’s always there, like a whisper or a shadow. He never hit me. But he left plenty of goddamn scars, and some of them I can’t show you because they’re in my head._

_But I got him in the end. I won. He told me to ‘smile’ so many times, but I got to say it the last time. Right before I snapped his goddamn neck._

 

* * *

 

Jessica finished, and waited to implode. But she didn’t.

If anything, she could breathe a little easier. Like some weight she hadn’t noticed before was gone. Even if just for a second.

Hogarth had been watching her. Her eyes found Jessica’s immediately when she looked up.

“Don’t do that,” Jessica snapped, but her tone was too weary to really be sharp. Hogarth glanced down at the pad, raising a brow questioningly. Jessica just pushed it towards her.

Hogarth stood, grabbed the pad and walked while she read. Sometimes she had to squint, ask Jessica was a particular scrawl said.

When she finished, she folded the paper back and gave Jessica a long look. Jessica toyed with the glass of water, running her finger around the rim because if she picked it up, she would crush it.

“Might want to take out the last bit,” Hogarth said finally. “Doesn’t help our case. But this is good, Jessica. It’s honest –”

“It’s not,” Jessica said. Her voice was simple, matter-of-fact. She could finally look Hogarth in the eye, as the lawyer spun slowly to face her. “Not all of it.”

“The part about the woman,” Hogarth said, glancing back down.

Jessica felt the breath catch in her throat. “How do you know about her?”

Hogarth smoothed the legal pad, grabbed a file folder off the desk and slipped it carefully inside. “Because I do my job, Jessica,” she said simply. “As you said, there are articles. I tracked down the people who wrote them, found out who I needed to talk to –”

“Who you needed to _bribe_.”

“Who I needed to convince,” Hogarth continued, as if the other woman hadn’t spoken. “That it would be best if certain events stayed quiet.”

Jessica picked at the desk, her face stone and hard. “Best for who?” she asked. The words tasted bitter on her tongue, burned like ash.

Hogarth sighed lightly. In that one breath, she seemed just as tired as Jessica felt.

“If nothing else, Jessica,” the woman said, fastening the case shut. “It’ll be good for the case.”

Jessica nodded once. Then she stood up, and walked out, leaving her guts spilled onto that pad of paper,  and feeling strangely empty inside.

Emptier than usual.

 

 


End file.
